Life in Four Seasons
by Aiko Isari
Summary: (Persona 3) It's the last year of her life, no matter what. She intends to appreciate it.
1. Spring 1

_Spring 1_

She's shrugging on her new uniform, testing the feeling of the skirt around her waist, dancing at her mirror. Her foster parent peers at her through the crack. "One would think you won't miss us."

 _If I missed you, you would hear it._

She doesn't say this aloud. She doesn't mind this foster family. They were nice, they were good to her. Regardless, she'll be eighteen in a short while and that means she has to go home. She's able to inherit the remainder of her parents' assets, which aren't many. She wants to see her old home at least one more time before then.

Minako just wishes she knew _why._

(It's cause of her inner calling card, and she knows it, deep down.)

"I'm just excited!" Her voice bubbles out because this _is_ true. "Another new school, senior year, dorm life!"

"Personal space," her adoptive mother says. Her voice is gentle, to keep the fragile tranquility of the house. Even so, Minako knows she won't be missed.

That's all right.

"Pretty much," she agrees, and returns to packing.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ Hello! Little short thing because this is good practice for my super long Persona 3 fic later on! Anyway, here it is. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Challenges: Diversity Writing Challenge (Anime/Manga) E23. write in present tense


	2. Spring 2

_Spring 2_

She tries not to tap her foot on the train. It's late, it's so late. The train was delayed, so it's really not her fault, but oooff! She is probably going to get in trouble with her dorm manager anyway. She didn't even know who her dorm manager was. The letter inviting her had not been helpful at all. No fair!

(She took her pills, right? She thinks she did.)

 _"Iwatodai. Iwatodai. Please watch your step-"_

Good!

The music plays sultry in her ears. Low and dark and comforting in its own way. She's always liked dark music with cheerful lyrics. Or any music, really, but this was an old favorite.

"I will... burn my-"

Silence.

She steps into a puddle of blood and wrinkles her nose. Ew. Not again. It's been like this for _years_. It gets old.

She keeps walking, reveling in the brightness of the almost full moon. She knows it's a bad thing, because the wolves beg for mercy when the moon is full, but tonight it's for the best. Tonight she needs to find her way around the coffins and to the dorm, not wander like she usually does, comforted by the jade-green sky.

This has been her life for a while, after all.


	3. Spring 3

_Spring 3_

Minako signs the contract without thinking. It's easy enough. To choose your fate of your own free will? Well, she wouldn't be here if she hadn't!

(Isn't it more like choosing how you'll die of your own free will?)

Her heart shudders gently. She smiles, then turns away. The boy is familiar, the nostalgia making the shudder feel a little stronger than before. She hasn't missed a dose, she knows that for sure.

"Who's there?"

He's gone, there's a girl. With a gun. Was she at the right school?

"We didn't expect you so late."

Another girl. She's pretty. Well, they both are. a

Bad Minako. You know better. Don't go after the girls again.

Ah, she has a year left. The least she can do is look.

Especially if one of the girls looks back.


	4. Spring 4

_Spring 4_

Everyone at this school is so nice. They're almost ordinary. Nothing like her conservative old school. No one judges her for the music she listens to, though the teacher had gotten a familiar look on her face when she read about her parents.

(And the blood was _everywhere_ back then.)

She has never held a gun before. She's often thought of suicide in a vague sort of way. (Why bother when you're already dying?)

Mitsuru looks more concerned than approving, but when she kills the Shadows (are they people? They squish like people do. She has seen people squished in the dark world before.) she nods a little, like she's proud.

Well, at least she can get her to look. Mitsuru seems so… she doesn't want to say adorable but in all of her years of curiosity, that is exactly what Mitsuru is. Adorable in a stiff, awkward sort of way that her composure doesn't know how to hide as well as she thinks it does.

Does Yukari notice? She seems to.

But Junpei just thinks she's hot and terrifying.

It really should be irrelevant. It's not though. It's really not. Not when looks are easy to remember when you're little.

She draws Mitsuru-senpai for Fuuka.

For some reason, Fuuka smiles at the picture.

Minako likes the Fuuka who smiles a lot. So she draws everyone else.


	5. Summer 1

_Summer 1_

Even though the sun is shining, no one is happy. Even though it is summer, there is a heavy weight on everyone. A secrecy, a coldness.

Minako doesn't understand, but Mitsuru seems colder than ever. She still doesn't pet Koro-chan when he pops up on their steps. She is withdrawing, further and further, into herself, into her walls.

 _(But you're always behind your mirrors Minako. That's why we're friends.)_

She doesn't simply want to be friends with Mitsuru.

If only senpai would notice her.

(The truth is she does, but only when the girl's hands are as red as her own hair.)

Minako thinks of the past, the little girl who shared her desk on a rainy day of after-school French club, and smiles sadly. Those are the best memories, aren't they?


	6. Summer 2

_Summer 2_

Minako doesn't know how to comfort Yukari when she cries, not about a father who loved her and apparently had done horrible things. But she tries. She tries hugging her like she hugged her secret girlfriend in public while claiming a boyfriend had dumped her. She tells her something might be wrong, that if her father was such an awful person, Mitsuru's family would not be trying to fix these mistakes. They would be on her shoulders and not theirs. She isn't sure if these words work, but Yukari does stop crying at least, and is willing to come back.

Minako manages to get her to her room, and thinks of her parents. The parents she remembers more through photos and gentle gestures, acceptance of her breaking of the status quo even back then. She doesn't say any of this to Yukari. She feels Mitsuru's eyes on her the whole time they walk back.

Or perhaps they are Aigis'.

She wishes she could remember where the robot had met her, because that must be why she keeps watching, whatever happened at that time.

Still, she smiles at Mitsuru-senpai like everything is normal the next day, and gets a smile back. Progress.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ Sorry for the long wait! This has been done for a while, but real life has been busy lately. But I decided to post now that I'm almost done for a bit! Please enjoy!


	7. Summer 3

_Summer 3_

August comes through with claustrophobia and it is the _worst_ full moon ever. She had lost her fear of heights years ago from enough airplanes, so instead being stuck in a cramped area is even worse. Thinking of the train makes her shudder. She shivers the more that she looks at that closed door. A hand ghosts gently onto her shoulder, then away, but when she turns Mitsuru is sitting on the ground, breathing slowly. They are all collapsed, staring blankly at the ghost of the shadow. They're trying to conserve air, but there are just too many of them.

Minako is trying not to cry, rubbing brokenly at her eyes. All she can think of is the _doors,_ bent in, crashing closer and with the smell of burning, rotting death and someone's eye... No. No.

She grounds herself, remembers the cold earth beneath her feet. She almost vomits anyway.

Still, when Shinjiro gets them free, when she drags Mitsuru out of sight behind the dorm before anyone can notice, she kisses a little too soon, and a little too hard.

It scares them both, really.


	8. Summer 4

_A/N: I'm getting ready to finish backlogging this one. So we should end at 16-18 drabbles, like promised._

* * *

 _Summer 4_

Mitsuru does not confront her, not for a long while, and Minako is fine with that. She's fine because Aigis sometimes stays in or near her room when she's not supposed to and it reminds Minako of what safety is supposed to be.

Still, she hopes they can talk about this soon. Preferably with more kissing. She wonders if Mitsuru has dated much. She kind of hopes not. She's always had a thing for making beautiful women blush. Just ask her last girlfriend.

When Mitsuru comes over first, it's surprising. Her fingers touch Minako's shoulder and the urge to pull her down and kiss her again until her lips swell and the tension eases from every pore is almost too much.

Mitsuru smiles.

Minako smiles back and does what she wants when the others aren't looking.


	9. Autumn 1

_Autumn 1_

Autumn is the color of fire and it feels like the ashes.

It nips at her nose when she runs from the library to the dorm before the Dark Hour, before curfew. She can't fight today and she knows it. Today is her mother's birthday and she has to be home to make strawberry smoothies because those were her favorite.

(Her father was allergic to strawberries.)

Yukari is willing to help and she'd almost let Fuuka do it too if the girl didn't look so scared of the knife. Akihiko insists on extra protein in his and Shinjiro mocks him. Junpei is somehow quiet.

Mitsuru wants anything Minako will give her, but won't say it.

Minako cries into the mixture a little and they all notice. Ken gives the first hug with koromaru.

She can almost tell them she's dying right before their eyes. Almost.


	10. Autumn 2

_A/N: With the posting of this completed, will be weekly updates again unless something happens and I do a mass update._

* * *

 _Autumn 2_

Everything seems normal.

The world is falling apart yet Minako can still kill Shadows and shoot her own head. It's not due to grit or suicidal thoughts. She has plenty of death thoughts and none of them are gentle. People say heart failure is the best way to go but considering you have no idea when it's going to happen just how it will, it doesn't bode well for you in the slightest. So shooting herself feels like a choice and she likes the control.

Minako fists her hands into her skirt and thinks of little Maiko whose biggest worries are her separating parents and if Koromaru gets his walk every day and she is undeniably jealous. She's jealous and scared and often gives her hugs that are easily returned but not explained.

She wonders if this little girl could write to Ken once she's gone.


	11. Autumn 3

_Autumn 3_

Mitsuru doesn't know where to put her hands. Yet her sharp nails dig in gently so gently. She should be with Akihiko-senpai. She should be a crying mess. She should be trying to rouse the team to do a memorial, a celebration of the life of Shinji and how to handle Ken. She should be so many things, but instead she's right here, in Minako's bedroom.

She's letting Minako take the lead, as she had done in the beginning, since not long after they had met. Minako intends not to let her down.

What Mitsuru needs is to be down. And Minako obliges.

She doesn't say 'I love you' because that isn't what this is.


	12. Autumn 4

_Autumn 4_

 _Don't let go,_ her brain tells her gently. _Don't go gentle, don't go at all._

The last part is impossible because everyone has to go. Just listen to the bell toll. Listen to the whirring of Aegis' guns and the blankness in her voice. She's dead right now, Minako realizes. She's been killed by the Chairman, by the puppeteer who gave them all the wrong things and now she's just a zombie. Just like Minako is really.

It's that thought that makes her just _look_ at Aegis. So imploring because really, sacrificing someone's rotting corpse won't really help but not everyone else. Not Mitsuru, who is watching her father helplessly and has probably no memory of this helplessness ever since she had power.

She hopes that's why Aegis stops, and not of love for her. She can't bear that.


	13. Winter 1

_Winter 1_

She wears Ryoji's scarf with the same religiosity that he had pursued in giving it to her.

When Aegis was left in pieces, she had remembered. She had remembered the smoke and the flames, of stumbling out and looking at the wreckage through blood and tears and scrambling in the ashes for her inhaler. She remembered Ryoji. Ryoji and the feeling of something.

She had never needed her inhaler after that. He had held her and cried and told her he was so sorry. So sorry because he was the walking apocalypse and she was his mother and had fed him, and in turn, he had fed off of her.

He was killing her. He had been killing her for ten years.

Mitsuru's ashen face had only grown worse upon hearing that.


	14. Winter 2

_Winter 2_

The group fights and screams, they kick and throw things and all Minako can think of are the five stages of grief in old textbooks, the five stages of refusing to accept what the world is born knowing.

Though she has already decided what she's going to do. If the end will come, she will fight for the others to continue on. Obliviousness isn't a happy ending and they all know it, deep down.

After she tells them so, Mitsuru visits her room. Usually they go to the older girl's, the lavishly decorated and sweet smelling one. Mitsuru isn't good with sentimentality.

She says 'I love you' this time and it hurts so much more that she means it.


	15. Winter 3

_Winter 3_

The world below them is covered in black and red splotches. Even up here, they can see the Shadows staring at them.

Minako looks away, at Takaya, who might as well be a Shadow. She raises her naginata.

"Why can you not just accept Fate," he asks.

Minako smiles brightly, feeling everyone's eyes on her back. "It's not time for me to see my parents yet."

He scoffs. She smiles wider.


	16. Winter 4

Winter 4

The world where Nyx sleeps is a familiar kind of cold. Minako shivers. The SEES uniform isn't enough now, not for death to stay away. It's always been so close. It'd be like greeting an old friend to give in now. Ryoji's voice is gentle in her ear, whispering words of comfort, of eternity in peace.

The others' voices, Mitsuru's voice is louder. For a moment, Minako thinks of fire and ice and falling cherry blossom petals.

Then she smiles, because she is still alive, and raises her hands to Death like welcoming arms.


	17. Spring 0

_Spring 0_

The school, the world, looks so small compared to the sky. She watches and sit down. She lays down. She watches the clouds. She watches Aigis' face. She watches everything and yawns.

"She'll be here soon," Aigis tells her.

Minako smiles and brushes the tears from her eyes. She hears the distant creak of a door hinge…

Then Ryoji takes her hand and reminds her they promised to go to the carnival. She looks towards Mitsuru's voice and waves in its general direction.


End file.
